41 comments:

I wrote about Steve Jobs the day before he died. Although Jobs was undeniably a visionary he had much less influence on society than Tom Edison or the much maligned Sam Insull. What would our county be like if there were more men like Jobs, and these men were allowed to focus their imagionation on solving the problems caused by peak oil and demographic disaster?

Wow, a lot of FIRE guys must have had the man-crush on Jobs. I am, eh, indifferent. A fancier phone? A music player? A tablet? The anecdote passed along by Rod Dreher at TAC about "maybe you need Apple more than you need a wife" says an awful lot, to me, about Jobs' character. Great? Maybe. History will judge. But good? Nah.

Jobs stands out only because everyone ELSE was so bad. A guy who can find his behind in the dark, without a flashlight and a map, and with either hand, seems God-like compared to oh, Jeffrey Immelt, or Warren Buffett, or Reed Hastings, or Howard Schulz (opening Starbucks in Compton to "train" inner-city "youth" so the LAT informs us).

Jobs understood Apple could only make money by high margins, and that in turn meant making devices and computers that were ridiculously easy to use, so the extra bucks were worth it. There were other MP3 players out there, and still are, but Apple's are the easiest to use and integrate best with the software management of Itunes. Everything Jobs did was pursue high margin, by advanced design AND software/hardware integration. And contra perceived wisdom of 1977 or 1997, did so targeting the consumer not the corporate base.

This only seems remarkable because everyone ELSE failed at that. Even Time-Warner is happy to live at 4% or so, instead of Apple's rumored 25% or so gross margins.

Well, pretty much single-handedly creating the world's (intermittently) most valuable company, and one that actually provides people with something extremely useful (rather than being basically parasitic and manipulative), isn't something to sneeze at these days. Can any commenter name the last American business leader who would fall into this category? Plus there's the factor of dying relatively young, and at the greatest peak of his success...

But no, I'm sure that all the MSM adulation is really due to all the PC journalists eager to tout a half-Muslim-Arab-American...

It's the comeback that really makes Jobs stand out as one of the greatest businessmen ever. He had his moment in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and then it was over. But he wasn't.

It's kind of like how Frank Sinatra's career seemingly peeked with the bobbysoxer fad of 1945 when he was in his late 20s, but then he came back almost a decade later at an age when most pop musicians are washed up and pushed pop singing to a new peak. That's how you know for sure that Sinatra was the real deal.

Steve, you're forgetting Pixar. He made gazillions on three different, sort-of-unrelated occasions. That implies that his first success with the Apple II wasn't a fluke. Since the dawn of time regular Joes have discounted other men's spectacular successes as random flukes. It's hard to do that to him.

He was no Edison or Ford, but he was still closer to them on the innovativeness scale than to the average businessman of today. On many occasions he brought not even new products, but new categories of products to the market.

Given the outpouring of grief and also drive-by condolences by Michael Strahan and Eva Longoria et al. you'd never know he was bitterly controversial within his own industry. More shocking that Google posted a link (for 24 hrs time) on their home URL, instead of the promotional tie-in to "Horrible Bosses" which I would've expected. It is interesting what he apparently symbolized to the man in the street, and if Sailer wanted to "not rush out a Steve Jobs post" he might examine the psychological tension within the nomenklatura who despise Corporations but love late-capitalist technological dynamism (on 2nd thought Dave Brooks might have already killed that one dead). Anyway that's a take I'd like to read; calling Jobs an SOB is as relevant as Henry Ford's blog. In other news U.S. capitalism died a actually a few years ago, after a long illness. Did Gelernter have a comment on that?

Count me in the "Jobs is up there with Ford and Disney" camp. And I don't even own an iPhone. But in the three decades of my life I've seen American company after company run into the ground by a focus on short term profits over quality and product. Apple bucked that trend and focused on bringing the absolute best experience to the consumer. And yes, they asked the consumer to step up and pay more. And the consumer did dig deep, and overall they ended up happier for it.

And don't forget Pixar. The company started making 30 second commercials and within 10 years was making the best movie of the year, every year. Totally different field, but same vision and dedication. Jobs found people that could make it happen, drove them hard, and made shareholders, employees, and society richer.

We need more men like Jobs who can give a big F.U. to focus group tested crap (sorry Steve) and instead focus on making money only as a means to making something as good as it can be.

Jobs talked about Team a lot. He was an sob but did give credit to the Team...

Btw the guy who has run Pixar since the beginning is a former Disney cartoonist who turned out to be the best studio exec in Hollywood in terms of batting avg and grosses. I can't remember his name because he is a real Mr. Under the Radar

Jobs talked about Team a lot. He was an sob but did give credit to the Team...

Btw the guy who has run Pixar since the beginning is a former Disney cartoonist who turned out to be the best studio exec in Hollywood in terms of batting avg and grosses. I can't remember his name because he is a real Mr. Under the Radar

Just don't go to Slate whatever you do; the quirky/funky/edgy/hagiographic Steve Jobs stories have already crowded out the Sarah Emmanuel Goldstein dispatches from earlier in the day (although at this writing the advice column "I'm Married, Should I Stop Visiting Prostitutes?" is holding the #1 popularity slot)

A lot of the coverage has been saying that he was the greatest person ever but also that he was proof that this country is still awesome and will bounce back from the depression because of awesome Americans like him. How can he be a rare non-since-Edison genius and also a reliable-like-clockwork recession-killing exemplar of American durability?

Anyway, a lot of the worship over his product seems to be premised on the idea that people are perfectible and universally educable and so his awesome gizmos will educate us all into a utopian future.

I remember all those 'great' business lessons about microsfoft vs apple - and market share.. well in the long run? I guess the 'experts' will have to forget their old analysis, just like financial ' experts'

The genetic aspect it the most fascinating -the sister becomes famous in her own right and apparently the great grandfather in syria as well. thought he is half anglo-german

I'm not quite sure what all the hubbub is about. You don't typically see people crying and writing effusive eulogies over the deaths of people who invented products or headed companies they liked. Then again, I'm a PC, so maybe I just don't "get it".

I find the competition that seems to be going on to make the most over-the-top statement of praise for Jobs to be an interesting sociological phenomenon. There really should be a name for this. I nominate "hyperbole auction."

Steve Jobs was a great capitalist with a unique style and by all accounts was a fine father, husband and highly effective boss. His company's Apple products are beloved by millions worldwide as are Pixar movies, and he made lots of money and made many others wealthy as well so why the case of sour apples, Steve?Envy-Green sour apples are they? Uncommon bad form on your part. Show proper manners and at least wish the man R.I.P. if you can't acknowledge his deeds and admirable personal attributes.

Journalists live to deify CEOs; that is the characteristic of journalism. Further, Steve was exactly the kind of CEO they want to spend their days fashioning stories about. It was a royal wedding made in heaven--the widow journalists are grieved to have lost their soulmate. "He was really one of us"

Steve Jobs was an artist and what's more he was able to not only create a product, but also produce it and sell it. A few can do one or two but very, very few people can do all three successfully. He understood that a visual image contains not merely intellectual and material information but also spiritual. God speed.

Yuppie moses? Yuppies hated computers in general because computers eliminated secretaries. But they feared Apple even more than Microsoft because Apple made computers fun and further wrecked yuppie self-superiority over drone-like support staff. Techies hated Apple because the graphic user interface (GUI) destroyed their C> drive mystique.

Apple and Steve Jobs won over dreary code-crunching snobs and establishment snobs in the end because it saved money and allowed people to focus on producing a product or service at a lower cost.

“My father was a self-made millionaire who owned extensive areas of land which included entire villages,”

Jandali is exaggerating of course. During his father's time, Syria was dirt poor. You'll notice that he doesn't mention what his father actually did. During those times, it was very difficult to create wealth unless you inherited it. What is even stranger about Jandali is that after getting a PhD, he decided to run a restaurant. Despite his intelligence, he doesn't seem to have been as driven as his son or daughter.

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